Networking architectures have grown increasingly complex in communications environments. In addition, the augmentation of clients or end users wishing to communicate in a network environment has caused many networking configurations and systems to respond by adding elements to accommodate the increase in networking traffic. Communication tunnels or links may be used in order to establish or to gain access to a network, whereby an end user or an object may initiate a tunneling protocol by invoking a selected location or a network node. The network node or central location may then provide a platform that the end user may use to conduct a communication session.
As the subscriber base of end users increases, proper routing and efficient management of communication sessions and data flows becomes even more critical. Having access to, or being aware of, accurate network node activity is important for executing proper loadbalancing techniques. In cases where improper loadbalancing protocols are executed, certain network components may be overwhelmed, while other (potentially more capable) network resources remain untapped. This overburdening may decrease throughput and unnecessarily restrict the flow of network traffic (potentially causing congestion or bottlenecks in the system).
Additionally, stale sessions, which are generally prevalent in any network communications, may be problematic because they inhibit bandwidth capabilities and preclude additional communications tunnels or end users from being accommodated by a given architecture. Stale sessions may be a problem for a database, a table, or any other storage component relegated the task of accounting for a resource-consuming entity. Stale sessions create an inefficiency because network components may still continue to maintain certain data segments even though the corresponding network activity has ceased. The network activity (e.g. connections or channels), which initially required, spawned, or otherwise triggered these resources, is no longer occurring and, thus, their network resources should be liberated or their responsibilities should be relinquished such that they can be deployed for additional connections and channels.
Thus, designing an optimal loadbalancing configuration for any network architecture provides a significant challenge to component manufacturers, system administrators, and network operators.